Murdered mother lay undiscovered for eight years while killer went on to form paedophile ring

Last updated at 08:14 31 October 2007

A convicted paedophile was found guilty today of stabbing his girlfriend to death and burying her in a cellar where she lay undetected for eight years.

The jury at Manchester Crown Court decided by a majority of 10 to two that Frederick Lawlor, 54, murdered Dorothy Carre, 56, in 1999 by repeatedly knifing her in the front room of their house in Rochdale, before burying her in a shallow grave in the cellar.

Lawlor is already serving an indeterminate sentence for sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl and offering her for sex with other men while he watched and filmed them.

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In fact, police only discovered Mrs Carre's remains after her daughter Lynn Edwards, 42, spotted Lawlor on Crimewatch in connection with his paedophile activity and filed a missing persons report with police.

It was the third such report desperate relatives had filed since the mother-of-four vanished in 1999 - and if her remains had been found earlier, he would probably have never been free to commit further offences.

As the verdict was delivered today, Mrs Edwards, shouted "Yes!" and rushed out of the public gallery.

Lawlor, dressed in a white T-shirt and grey cardigan, sat impassive in the dock while one of Mrs Carre's sons, David Carre, 38, began crying.

Jurors - who had not been told of Lawlor's paedophile past - gasped as they learnt he was jailed in Strangeways Prison in April last year after admitting 18 sex offences involving the girl on beaches in North Wales.

Two female jurors burst into tears and others shook their heads at the news.

The judge in that case said Lawlor had abused the girl on at least 75 occasions and described the acts as among the "most evil and unpleasant" the court had come across.

As well as offering her for sex to men he met on beaches at Pensarn and Llanddulas, at his flat and in a car, he advertised in the publication Loot.

Police were alerted after a member of the public saw the girl being abused on Pensarn beach late at night.

The young victim said she had been assaulted by around 50 men, with 10 people so far convicted in connection with the case.

Lawlor was arrested in March this year after police investigating the disappearance of mother-of-four Mrs Carre found the remains of a body under the cellar floor at the address in Equitable Street.

She had been wrapped in a duvet and placed in a shallow grave which was covered over by flagstones.

During the trial, the court heard that a post-mortem examination showed the bones had at least 10 stab wounds to the vertebrae, which a pathologist said would have required "extreme" force to inflict.

Although there was no soft tissue, DNA testing provided "extremely strong" evidence that the remains were those of Mrs Carre. She had last been seen alive by her GP on March 11 1999.

The prosecution alleged she had been stabbed to death by Lawlor in the front room of the house they shared before he buried her in the cellar.

Despite evidence linking him to Equitable Street, Lawlor denied ever having lived at the address and claimed Mrs Carre left him in 1999 to go and live in the Republic of Ireland.

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The court also heard that Lawlor had two previous convictions for physically abusing former girlfriends.

In 1981 he was convicted of actual bodily harm after he repeatedly punched his girlfriend and then jumped on her stomach while she was seven months pregnant.

And in 1987 he was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm for an attack on another partner which had striking similarities to the death of Mrs Carre.

Lawlor attempted to electrocute Nora Roche by putting the flex from an electric fire into the bath with her, before picking up a knife and stabbing her multiple times with such force that she needed five operations and had to wear a colostomy bag for five months due to lacerations to her bowels.

He will be sentenced later today.

The judge, Mr Justice Holland, thanked the jury for their concentration throughout a difficult case.

He said: "This had particularly distressing features and you must have found it a burden that you must have had to shoulder over the past few weeks."

He also praised the police and the Crown Prosecution Service for the "amount of work that went into the detection" in the case.

In a witness impact statement released by Greater Manchester Police, Mrs Edwards said: "Frederick Lawlor has taken my mother's life and as a result of this the four of us have lost our mother; 13 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren have lost their grandma.

"As a family we always hoped mum would see Fred for what he really is: a cruel, manipulative bully, and return to us. That is never going to happen.

"I will never see my mum again and our lives are changed forever, this is something that will affect and change us as people for the worse and something we will have to learn to live with when we finally come to terms with it.

"I have not only lost my mother but my friend and this can never be changed. The children will never be able to spend time with their grandma."

She continued: "Since 1995 Frederick Lawlor has taken our mother from us, initially by manipulating her into staying away from us and finally by committing the worst crime by taking her life in such a cruel, callous, heartless and premeditated way, ensuring she would never return to her family.

"This has deprived us of our much-loved mother and our children will never know their grandma or experience her warm loving nature."

"For eight years her family had to go through the hell of not knowing where she was or what had happened to her, while Lawlor just carried on with his life.

"I hope the family can now find some comfort in the fact that Dorothy has been finally laid to rest and that Lawlor held accountable for his crime."

Mrs Carre's family, who reported her missing three times, are now considering a complaint against Greater Manchester Police who they claim should have investigated their mother's disappearance more thoroughly.

They first reported her missing in 1997 when she was tracked down to Bacup, Lancs with Lawlor, who was described as having a "controlling" character.

She was last seen by a GP in 1999. Her family reported her missing again in 2001 but her body was only discovered when police were prompted by a third report last year, after Lawlor was arrested for child abuse.

He was jailed indefinitely in April 2006 after admitting 18 sex offences involving a 13-year-old girl he offered for sex with other men while he watched and filmed them, often joining in.

But Mrs Edwards, 42, had previously reported her mother missing in 2001 - and very little was done about it.

She filed the report at a police station in Oldham but no record remains of it.

Two officers visited Mrs Edwards to say that Mrs Carre was "not unduly claiming benefits" so they were not worried about her disappearance.

Sources say this is because Mrs Edwards had reported her mother missing in 1997 and she had been traced to an address in Bacup but did not want any contact with her family.

Mrs Edwards is considering whether to launch a formal complaint against Greater Manchester Police about the earlier missing person report.

She said the family had fallen out with Mrs Carre over her relationship with Lawlor, but added that that should not have made any difference.

She said: "We will decide what to do in due course, because today is all about my mum. The police investigating her death have been brilliant, but the ones who came to my door that day were just boys in blue. They didn't care.

"If they'd looked into it better then we'd have been able to be here in court perhaps four years earlier, and would have been able to come to terms with what's happened sooner."

Mrs Edwards' brother, David Carre, 38, one of Mrs Carre's sons, said: "If they'd investigated more at the time, and found her, then there would have been more of mum left and we'd have more of an idea what happened to her."

A spokeswoman for Greater Manchester Police said they would look into the matter of the missing Oldham report if Mrs Edwards decided to make a complaint.

But she said it would be "very difficult" to uncover new information unless Mrs Edwards knew the names of the officers she spoke to in 2001.

Even if Mrs Edwards did make a complaint, the matter was unlikely to be referred, according to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, as the failure to investigate fully did not lead to Mrs Carre's death - only to her body lying undiscovered for longer.